Kroblues Vs The Chuck Me Mondays Challenge
by kroblues
Summary: My attempt at the Chuck Me Mondays Challenge. After Bryce's betrayal, Sarah says never again to forming emotional connections. Hmm, we all know how that one turned out. Rated T just to be safe, but there's nothing too bad in my opinion.
1. Sarah Vs The Intersect

_**A/N: I decided I might as well join in with this. I haven't read the other ones (except Wepdiggy's) so I apologise if I may have inadvertently copied someone. My focus for these little drabbles is everyone's favourite CIA agent: Sarah Walker. Please read, enjoy, and review. **_

Sarah couldn't help but feel that she should be feeling something different to what she was now. She was in love with Bryce, wasn't she? Now she wasn't too sure; she thought she should be feeling some sense of loss at his passing. All she felt was betrayal. Since Graham had called to tell her that Bryce had broken into the Intersect facility and had subsequently been shot and killed, none of the feelings that Sarah was expecting had bubbled to the surface. Sure, she had been angry, but not at whatever had conspired to take Bryce from her. She had gone through the apartment she and Bryce shared and systematically destroyed anything connected with Bryce. Photos, music, even his favourite mug had been unceremoniously flung out of the window.

What surprised her was that she was only angry at his betrayal of his government, his country, and _her_. She had briefly wondered if all her years as an agent had stunted her emotions enough to be indifferent to death. After all, more enemy agents had met their end at the sharp end of a knife expertly thrown, or a bullet fired with deadly accuracy, than Sarah cared to count. But she couldn't help feeling this _should_ be different. Bryce was her first partner. Since the age of 23, she hadn't worked with anybody else. Obviously there would have been a connection formed somewhere along the line, even when the sex was just a way to blow off steam from a particularly challenging mission, she had felt something. They weren't a normal couple by any standards, and Sarah had come to accept that; she had long given up any hope of a normal relationship and a normal life. The Agency was her reason for being now, and emotional connections only got in the way of a successful mission.

So now, staring at the dossier in front of her, one Charles I. Bartowski, a Nerd Herd supervisor at a Buy More, Sarah had been pushed even further down than before. Further down than Bryce had ever managed to coax the girl within the agent out of the stony-walled shell that had been built up over years. Agent Walker was in control now, as she had been before Bryce came into her life, and as she would be from now on.

Because Agent Walker was determined to never let emotional connections get in the way of the mission again.


	2. Sarah Vs The Helicopter

**A/N: I figured I might as well post this now, gonna have plenty of time to write the next few in the car on the way to Uni tomorrow. Progress is going decently on the new chapter of Security Service for those of you who care, I hope that I can get that posted tonight too. Again, enjoy my take on Sarah's 'thoughts' on the Helicopter episode. **

Really? A Wienerlicious? That's the best they could come up with?

Sarah was livid at the Agency's choice of her cover job for the foreseeable future. As if the pigtails and the low cut blouse wasn't enough, the skirt just topped things off. And that damn hot dog necklace. Since she had picked up the, for want of a better word, uniform, Sarah had been seething at whichever pencil pusher back at Langley had decided it might be funny to let one of the world's most efficient killing machines wear one of the most ridiculous outfits known to man.

Sure, it would be fine if the mission called for her to distract a horde of teenage boys, but this was just asset protection. Not Sarah's speciality, by any means; she was more used to the quick in-and-out missions that involved relatively little in the way of cover maintenance. An assassination here, a seduction there, maybe the occasional gun battle to break up the monotony of the high profile assassinations. Now she had to think about someone else for once, someone who wouldn't know a safety catch from the magazine release on a pistol. _God help me if I get locked in the freezer and he has to shoot the lock off_, Sarah thought. Not that it was ever a good idea to give an asset a gun anyway, but it would be nice to know that he had some experience in shooting weapons that didn't require a loading screen.

Ah, the asset. Of all the people Sarah had expected to become involved in a top secret government conspiracy, he wouldn't be near the top of the list. Yet there was just something about him that seemed as though he were destined to be an agent. He had managed to defuse that bomb in less than 30 seconds, and that included a phone call to his idiot bearded friend. Almost as if he were Luke Skywalker, instead of Peter Parker. And it annoyed Sarah that she could make that comparison; the extensive research into her new asset/cover boyfriend had resulted in several late nights watching various sci-fi and superhero films in order to cement her cover.

Yet somehow, it was worth it to see his goofy grin when she surprised him with a throwaway reference to _Star Wars _or _Firefly_.

_Dammit Walker, you're stronger than this. No emotional connections_,_ not now, not ever._


	3. Sarah Vs The Tango

**A/N: The third chapter into Sarah's progression through the series. Hope you enjoy it.**

_What the hell was I thinking?_ Sarah asked herself as she drove away from the Bartowski apartment. The smart, professional thing to do would be to answer Chuck's (_asset, dammit, asset! _Sarah repeatedly told herself) statement of "I think I could suffer through it" with something noncommittal, or better yet, nothing at all. Yet her mouth just had to betray her. _What the hell was I thinking?_ "Me too" was just about the dumbest thing she could have said to Chuck (_asset! For the love of God, asset!_) in that situation, yet the normally oh so reliable filter that her training had placed on her vocal chords had conveniently decided to go AWOL at that exact moment. _What the hell was I thinking?_

She couldn't believe it. Less than a month and she already viewed her asset as not someone to be controlled, but a friend. That had to be a record. Damn him and his normal life. Damn him for making Agent Walker lose control momentarily. Damn him for bringing Sarah back to the surface. _If Carina saw me now I don't know what she'd say_, thought Sarah, thoughts going back to a simpler time when the most difficult emotional situation she faced was whether to end a life quickly or slowly.

Now Chuck (_asset!) _was in her life everything seemed to be screwed up. Before she caught that plane to L.A. she was perfectly happy to go back to the agency after reclaiming the Intersect data and eliminating the college failure that appeared to have received them. She would have been fine with devoting her life to the service of her country. Now she wasn't too sure. Even in the short time she had spent on this assignment, she could see the benefits of a strong support network. She could see that Chuck _(asset!) _was stronger because of his emotional connections, not weaker. Before, Sarah had pitied those who relied on others. Now she wasn't so sure.

This wasn't how this assignment was supposed to go.


	4. Sarah Vs The Wookie

**A/N: I was struggling for an idea for Sizzling Shrimp, but I'll keep up my "one a day" rate of updates for this story. Hopefully inspiration will strike me soon for both the next chapter of this and Security Service. Hope you like my take on Sarah's thoughts after the "Lisa" scene in Wookie.**

How had this happened already? What happened to the "no emotional connections" Agent Walker that had caught the plane to L.A? Where was she when Sarah needed her? There wasn't any reason to it, but when she saw Chuck's (_the asse...oh what's the point in bothering anymore?)_ hopeful face looking up at her as he knelt before her, asking her to tell him something, _anything_, real about her, she just couldn't summon the will to resist.

That same will had enabled her to face down several large men with pointy implements of pain on more than one occasion. It had enabled her to keep her mouth shut as she waited for Bryce to find her, despite the repeated beatings she was receiving at the hands of her captors. Yet it couldn't resist those large, brown, and most of all, hopeful, eyes.

Sarah knew it must have been Carina that planted the idea in his head. She had probably said something along the lines of a spy not wanting to tell you anything real about themselves, no matter who they are. That was true, but apparently only for 999,999 assignments out of a million. Typical that she should land the assignment that got under her skin.

At least one good thing had come out of Carina's fly-by visit. Sarah's decision to keep her relationship with Bryce a secret was guaranteed to come back to bite her in the ass at some point. (_Knowing my luck he's alive and waiting to pop back into my life,_ Sarah had thought bitterly) It was far better to get that particular revelation out of the way quickly; things would have only gotten worse in time if she had maintained her stance on the "we were just partners" front. Casey wasn't going to be any help, in all likelihood. If she had kept the charade up he would likely have ended up letting something slip about her and Bryce's relationship. It hadn't exactly been a secret in the halls of the various agencies.

One thought prevailed once she had got past the anger at herself for letting herself slip _again_, for letting another emotional connection form, and this time to a civilian no less. It wouldn't work, it couldn't work, and yet for some reason she had had the thought, on more than one occasion, of just kissing him and seeing where it went. _I'd never be that stupid though_, she was sure. Compromise did not enter her vocabulary. Maybe if she thought she were about to die, and only then, would she allow her real thoughts to come to the surface. But only then. She wouldn't ever get in that deep though, surely? She could, nay; she _would_ fight him and his damn hopeful eyes that always got to her.

The prevailing thought in her mind however, was _Thank God I waited until he couldn't hear me_.


	5. Sarah Vs The Sizzling Shrimp

Just when she thought Chuck (asset was long gone now) couldn't be any more surprising, he goes above and beyond the call of duty to help rescue somebody, as Casey so eloquently put it "not even the Chi cops care about". Sarah was starting to get used to her new-ish partner's, methods of communication, but she was worried that she found herself caring more about the downhearted look that crossed Chuck's face when Casey chose not to help than she probably should have. Looking objectively, it probably wasn't worth helping an off-the-grid Chinese agent with a rogue mission, but that look on Chuck's face wasn't something she wanted to see too often. Luckily, he gave her the perfect excuse to go along with the mission.

Going that far to help someone's family, Sarah was quickly learning, was a big part of Chuck's life. She felt bad that he had to continually lie about all of his heroism to the person whose opinion probably mattered most to him. And when she had gone over Casey's surveillance of the night Chuck had yet again ignored orders but still ended up saving them, she felt a pang of sadness for him. Not only was he being forced to lie, but his double life was leading him to miss important 'real-life' things, like the Bartowski Mother's Day. As she listened to that, Sarah had to physically control herself to avoid running in and telling Ellie that it was all her fault, just to let Chuck avoid any more pain at the government's, and by association, her hands. She was going to kill him for that spastic colon excuse too. _Seriously? He couldn't pick something less disgusting like, I dunno, a stomach bug?_ Sarah wasn't looking forward to having to occasionally fake an attack, all in the name of that damn cover-maintenance.

Going back to Mother's Day, Sarah was again surprised at just how much she was being included in this family group. Even as a child, once her mom had left, she had never really had a family. It was just her and her Dad, roaming across America conning rich (and dumb) people out of their hard earned money. This feeling, this sense of normality, was alien to her, yet she was already beginning to feel like it was something she wanted. And it was all because of Chuck, yet again. Sort of. Sarah felt guilty that Ellie was looking at her as some sort of saviour for Chuck; the person destined to lead him out of the Buy More once and for all. It pained Sarah to know that it was all fake; the dates were missions, the PDA was forced, at best, on Chuck's side. Sarah, of course, didn't mind the cover dating part one bit; it let her experience normality, if only for a short time.

Normality. One word, yet it meant so much to Sarah.


	6. Sarah Vs The Sandworm

Sarah was asking herself more often than not these days just what possessed her to say certain things to Chuck. She could have just left his comment about being a real couple hanging, or said something from the Agency handbook of ambiguous answers. But no, she had to go and say that they were a real couple. Did his opinion of "them" really mean that much to her? Did she feel the need to constantly affirm their "relationship" with unnecessary touches and affection, all under the name of cover maintenance?

Of course she did. But worse, she didn't even stop to think about the bugs in Chuck's room when she felt the need to affirm their relationship. And then there was that ever present need for something "real". A perfectly normal need for anyone to have, but that was precisely the problem: they weren't normal. They probably weren't anywhere close to anybody's definition of a couple either.

She couldn't deny it hurt to see the photo of her and Chuck "at" Comic Con thrown unceremoniously in with the rest of the rubbish, but what hurt her more was that she knew it was her fault. She had breached the trust that had built up between them by hiding the bug behind that photo. Any other agent, hell, any other asset, and she wouldn't have been fazed by it. She would have defended herself fiercely, citing the professional need for the safety of her asset. With _this_ asset, however, all she could think of was how to make it up to him. She could have turned up to the Halloween party in a simple costume, but it was worth wearing that particular costume to see the look of astonishment that crossed Chuck's face. And the grin he wore when she mentioned that perennial "something real" as she took that photo made everything seem right with her messed up world, if only for a second.

It wasn't a surprise to see just how well Chuck had adapted to his new career, especially considering it was rather forced upon him. Her heart had just about stopped when she saw Chuck standing with a pair of wire clippers in front of a car that she knew held a self-destruct device that had been activated less than a minute earlier. Yet she had faith, strangely, in her guy. Despite his lack of any formal training in bomb disposal, she felt safer than she had with Bryce. This was his destined profession, of that she was sure. But she also had a sneaking suspicion that Bryce had seen things differently. Her former partner/boyfriend and traitor had always mentioned the friend he had been forced to destroy in college. He had used it as an example for the rare occasions she doubted the sacrifice she had made.

The sacrifice was worth it now though, if it kept her Chuck safe.


	7. Sarah Vs The Alma Mater

Sarah was confused. It seemed to be happening a lot lately, what with the Chuck/staying professional argument that was constantly raging in her mind. It said a lot that she was counting the unprofessional side of the coin as "Chuck", when in reality he was essentially her job, at least for the time being. More than once she had caught herself thinking about her asset in very un-asset-like terms, and yet it didn't bother her so long as those thoughts remained in her head and weren't expressed. It was too early for her to be compromised. She couldn't be, surely?

And then there was the disk that Team Bartowski had recovered from Stanford. Sarah had to admit that she was intrigued by what had caused Chuck to come onto the CIA's radar while he was at college, and now it had come to light, she understood more fully what Bryce had meant by being "forced" to destroy his best friend. What had thrown her was that if he had a reason for getting Chuck expelled from Stanford, maybe he had a reason to go after the Intersect? Maybe he wasn't a traitor after all?

That was where Sarah stopped her line of thinking. She trusted her agency; if Bryce was a traitor according to them then he was probably a traitor. _Unless there's a rogue group within the CIA, but that's impossible,_ thought Sarah. She had heard stories from her instructors that there had been a rogue group within the CIA, but in this day and age? The vetting process alone should have taken care of that. But if Bryce wasn't a traitor, then why didn't he trust her? She could have helped him.

The hammer blow was the name of the project Chuck was being recruited for. Omaha. Where she and Bryce had first met. He was the best prospect from that project; to upload selected data in the form of subliminal images into an agent to provide intelligence for a specific mission. The project had been scrapped once the casualty rate got too high, but Bryce's subliminal image retention was supposedly high enough to survive a partial download of the Intersect, which was why he had been partnered with the rising star of the CIA: Sarah Walker. They were going to be the prototype Intersect team, before the scrapping of the project and the turn to a computer based Intersect.

Now she found out that Chuck would have been on the project. He would undoubtedly have been the prototype Intersect, going on his retention scores for subliminal images, which meant that she would have been partnered with him instead of Bryce. _And there wouldn't be any need for this damn cover maintenance. We could have been real_.

With the thought of how she was only a single badly timed meeting at Stanford away from a real relationship with Chuck, yet she was now stuck with playing a cover girlfriend/bodyguard to a man she had, against all odds, developed feelings for, Sarah looked down at the disk in her hands and tried to stop the tears of loss.

CIA rule #2: _Don't let your asset see a moment of weakness_.


	8. Sarah Vs The Truth

**A/N: Going on some of the reviews for Alma Mater, I know some of you disagree with my take on the last scene. What I was trying to get over was that Sarah was confused by the entire thing. I probably could have worded it better, but what I was trying to show is that she is already deeper in with Chuck than with Bryce, so she thinks in terms of Chuck when she sees the disk. Just my opinion. Now we've got that out of the way, time to see the Truth.**

She should have seen this coming. She could see the frustration Chuck had with their cover/not cover relationship, and it was putting a strain on him. It probably wasn't the best choice to wear that nightdress for the cover "sleepover", but if she was being honest with herself, it was because she wanted him to take a shot. All it ended up doing was creating an extremely awkward situation for both of them, which further cemented in Sarah's mind that she wasn't really built for relationships.

This, in turn, made it easier for her to avoid compromising herself when he did exactly what she was expecting as soon as they got affected by the truth serum. He knew she wouldn't give him a straight answer while she was still in agent mode, and despite his best efforts, he hadn't been able to coax her out of that protective shell for more than a few seconds at a time. _Still more than Bryce managed,_ Sarah's conscience warned her.

So when he asked her if their "under-the-cover" relationship was going anywhere, the answer in itself was easy. It was easy because she believed it to be true. Their relationship wasn't going anywhere. She was still a spy, and he was still her asset; even if they had got together, she'd be on a plane back to Washington faster than she could say "reassigned". Even without that, Sarah's past record wasn't particularly stellar when it came to relationships. She knew they weren't going anywhere because she would inevitably do something to sabotage it, no matter how she felt about him. Not for the first time since this assignment began, she cursed her childhood and the CIA for stunting her emotions to such an extent it would take a team of the world's most prominent psychiatrists to unravel her mind.

The "I'm sorry, no" was the easy part of her answer. What was difficult was biting back the part she so desperately wanted to add, and were it not for her training, she wouldn't have been able to fight it.

"I'm sorry, no," _but I want it to_.


	9. Sarah Vs The Imported Hard Salami

_Damn Chuck and his stubbornness. If he had just ran when I told him to we could have avoided this whole confusing mess_, thought Sarah. As it was, she now had an asset who was getting more mixed messages than anyone could be expected to decipher, and to make matters worse, her boyfriend/partner who she thought was dead and had betrayed her was alive, and she wanted answers on the betrayal part.

If it wasn't bad enough that she had just gone and made a confusing situation even worse, she had also potentially jeopardised her career in the process. Sarah was glad that if she was going to compromise herself to that extent with her asset, and she was pretty sure it was going to happen at some time in the near future anyway, at least she had managed to keep it away from surveillance, which was no mean feat considering Chuck's surveillance detail was among one of the most constant in the world.

Yet she couldn't stop thinking that it was maybe worth it, which wasn't what an agent should be thinking. What an agent _should_ be thinking is that she almost got her asset killed by not forcing him to leave. Then there was her display of jealousy-fuelled cover blowing in the nightclub which probably ended up leading to the whole "kiss in front of the bomb that wasn't actually a bomb" thing.

Again, she couldn't help feeling that maybe it wasn't a bad thing that she had essentially sabotaged Chuck's relationship. Sarah couldn't deny it hurt to see him out with somebody other than her, which were _very_ un-agent-like thoughts to have. Sure, she might have been able to justify it as ending a potential security risk to the asset, but considering she had defended Chuck's right to a real relationship, and it still hurt Sarah that that was the one thing she couldn't give him, no matter how much she wanted to, it would be a strange reversal of an opinion.

This Bryce thing was going to lead to trouble, of that Sarah was certain. She thought she had done a good job of compartmentalising her feelings when it came to that; her walls had shot up at his "betrayal", but seeing his still breathing body in that metal box brought back a lot of feelings that she wasn't expecting to ever have to deal with. She didn't think it was love; how can someone trained to push feelings down ever know what that is, for sure? She did know that seeing him again made her feel something, something other than the distaste she was expecting when she looked on the body of a traitor to her country.

One thing she did know was that she didn't feel anything like this when she saw Chuck. Whether that was good or bad, Sarah wasn't sure, but if she had to make a choice, and she had no doubt Bryce would try to make her rejoin him (_if_ he wasn't a traitor, Sarah reminded herself. It disturbed her that she immediately went back to thinking good of him, despite no evidence to prove that her ex/maybe not ex-boyfriend wasn't a traitor to his country), then Sarah honestly didn't know what to do.


	10. Sarah Vs The Nemesis

**It's been a long time coming, I know. And I'm sorry for that, but I've been hit by two things that make fic-writing a real struggle. 1) Real Life got very hectic when I moved to Uni, and 2) I haven't worked up enough motivation to write for a long time. I'll try to write some more of this and Security Service when I get chance, but it's been slow going on the writing front. **

_Come on, Walker. Answer Bryce's call. It's the best option, professionally._

Sarah knew that, yet she still couldn't bring herself to walk the few steps to pick up the hotel telephone. She was stood in between the two phones; Chuck's smiling face staring up at her on one, whereas the other phone was a cold relic of the past. A strangely fitting metaphor considering what she was feeling at that point. Chuck, and all that he offered, was warm and inviting, and going back to Bryce could only lead to the same coldness she had felt almost exactly from the day she had driven home to see ATF and CIA agents leading her father away in handcuffs. People let you down in the end, yet she couldn't find the willpower to leave what would almost certainly be a long dance around the presumably mutual feelings between Sarah and her asset/something-else-entirely.

In the end it boiled down to two options. Choose Bryce and use her impressive skill-set in the way it was designed to be used, but at the same time doom herself to a lifetime of loneliness, never being able to form a connection with anyone. It wasn't the spy's life to form a bond with anyone; you might be forced to betray them the next time you see them. But still, it was the professional option, and she couldn't deny that she and Bryce made a good team.

But on the other hand, staying with Chuck and being a part of what was rapidly becoming an important intelligence team had professional benefits too. Then there was the increasing danger that Chuck was now under with the emergence of Fulcrum. Could she really trust someone else to take care of him?

Of course, this was all just a logical rationalisation of the real reason she was struggling to leave: she genuinely liked Chuck. He wasn't just an asset that became a chore in the end. She had at the very least found the best friend she had ever had, but with the kiss at the docks she had consciously made the choice in her head that Chuck was more than an asset to her. Although, Chuck could never know that if she stayed with him. She had to at least be outwardly professional, even if inwardly there was a constant battle between the proverbial devil and angel.

And in this case, it seemed the devil was called Bryce Larkin.


End file.
